To further protect military personnel during combat, military vehicles can be provided with layers of armor. In some vehicles, the armor may be provided on the vehicle in the factory during manufacture of the vehicle. However, it has become increasingly common for armor to be applied to existing vehicles in the field.
The military started adding armor to various vehicles such as, for example, its High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, or “HMMWV” or “Humvee,” well before Operation Iraqi Freedom, but attacks from small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and “improvised explosive devices,” or IEDs in military parlance, prompted the military to increase protection for vehicles already in the field. The “up-armored” HMMWV can weigh thousands of pounds more than the standard HMMWV and includes several hundred pound steel-plated doors. Such heavy armored doors make opening and closing the doors increasingly difficult for personnel.
In co-pending and commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 12/194,895 and 12/194,966, there is provided a mechanism for assisting in moving heavy armored doors on military vehicles. Such a mechanism can be retrofitted to existing vehicles that are up-armored in the field. To promote safety with such motorized door assist systems, sensors can be desirably applied to ensure the door stops when an object or body part is in the way of door closing. There is a need for such a sensor system that can be applied to vehicle doors, and retrofitted to vehicles that are up-armored in the field.
In particular, as many military vehicles were not designed in order to have sensor parts attached thereto, there is a need for a sensor system that can be retrofitted to parts of vehicle doors that have manufacturing variability, e.g., slightly misaligned parts from one door to the next in the same type of vehicle. Misalignments in welded door parts, albeit small and inconsequential to the structure and strength of the door, can present problems for parts designed to be attached to these welded parts as the variations can cause fit problems.